Published: Saturday, May 4, 2013 at 03:00 PM.

A couple new staff members are about to join the ranks of the Burlington Police Department.

Let’s give it up for Duke and Justice.

The dogs and their handlers — James Faucette and Travis Grogan — graduated last week from a 14-week K-9 handler class at Wilson Community College’s Coastal Plain Law Enforcement Training Center in Wilson.

The dogs — both German shepherds — will go through an in-house evaluation Monday led by Burlington police officers. Providing all goes as expected, the dogs and their handlers will soon be on patrol.

“So far, we’ve been very pleased,” said Lt. Brian Long, administrator of the department’s canine program.

When Duke and Justice are declared worthy of patrol dog status, they’ll bring to four the number of canines in service with the Burlington Police Department. Two previous dogs were “retired” from the department this past winter, deemed too aged or injured to continue the grueling tasks required of a police canine.

A couple new staff members are about to join the ranks of the Burlington Police Department.

Let’s give it up for Duke and Justice.

The dogs and their handlers — James Faucette and Travis Grogan — graduated last week from a 14-week K-9 handler class at Wilson Community College’s Coastal Plain Law Enforcement Training Center in Wilson.

The dogs — both German shepherds — will go through an in-house evaluation Monday led by Burlington police officers. Providing all goes as expected, the dogs and their handlers will soon be on patrol.

“So far, we’ve been very pleased,” said Lt. Brian Long, administrator of the department’s canine program.

When Duke and Justice are declared worthy of patrol dog status, they’ll bring to four the number of canines in service with the Burlington Police Department. Two previous dogs were “retired” from the department this past winter, deemed too aged or injured to continue the grueling tasks required of a police canine.

Those are the dogs Duke and Justice are replacing.

Long said the average length of service for a police dog is eight to nine years. Once they age out of their service years, they’re typically deemed surplus property by city council members and sold at a nominal fee to their handlers. That’s what happened to the two dogs that served their last shifts this past winter.

Long said Duke and Justice and similar police dogs don’t come cheap, though they do come from a long ways away. The dogs cost about $7,000 apiece and are natives of the Czech Republic.

Long said sports involving canines are as popular there as football is in the United States. The dogs that come from Czechoslovakia traditionally make excellent police canines, he said.

Long said that before the dogs were enrolled in the training program in Wilson, they were referred to as “green” dogs. Now they’re far more seasoned.

Long said the animals are trained for tracking, article search (if a fugitive has ditched a firearm in a field while running from police, for instance), apprehension and drug alert — able to let their handlers know if the car they’ve stopped is carrying marijuana, cocaine or heroin.

“These dogs are work dogs,” Long said. “They enjoy staying busy.”

Staff Sgt. Reid Metters is the canine supervisor for the Burlington Police Department. Metters and the department’s four handlers and their dogs get together once a week for training.

Long said the dogs aren’t playthings and stick pretty much to the supervision of their individual handlers. Still, Long said, officers are excited when new dogs are introduced to the police department’s crime-fighting repertoire.